Snow Days: Then and Now

Remember when you were a little kid, and you’d actually wake up on time for school… just so you could huddle next to the radio and listen for your school to be called on the list of snow days?

With winter’s doom impending and temperatures dropping faster than an eight ball at Amy Winehouse’s flat, we can’t help but cross our fingers and pray… Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Are snow days something you never grow out of? Or, in college, do they prove that miracles really can happen? Here’s how our anticipation of snow days has evolved since grammar school.

Then: A snow day meant a day off from times tables.

Now: We don’t have to finish copying someone else’s MiniTabs before Stats lab.

Then: We would make a beeline to the street and get all the neighborhood kids together for a snowball fight.

Now: We don’t have to brave arctic winds to walk to class and sit through lecture with snot-cicles hanging from our frostbitten faces.

Then: Since we were already up at the crack of dawn, we could take advantage of the snow day and start building a snow man as soon as we got “the word.”

Now: We can go back to sleep for about six hours, and wake up just in time for happy hour.

Then: Snow days meant putting on snow pants and trekking to the biggest hill in town for a full day of sledding.

Now: Snow days mean trekking to the bar and putting our liquor jackets on.

(Note: I love how college students use a blizzard as an excuse to go to the bar, yet even when school isn’t cancelled, we deem it too treacherous to walk to class.)

Then: For some unfortunate children, snow days meant driveway-shoveling duty before the parents got home.

Now: After the storm passes, we have to shovel our cars out from behind the snow banks the university plows have inevitably created throughout the parking lot.

Then: We could spend a whole extra day working on our vocabulary exercises!

Now: We could start that research paper that was due three days ago… but who are we kidding? We probably won’t.

Then: We had an excuse to drink hot chocolate for breakfast.

Now: We have an excuse to drink a thirty-pack for breakfast.

I think it’s clear that snow days are one of mankind’s greatest inventions. Honestly, snow delays and cancellations are one of the top reasons to attend a university in a colder climate. I feel bad for those of you who are earning degrees in Hawaii, Florida, California, or any other season-less state. You will never experience the joys of the world’s most beautiful Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card: the beloved snow day!